


Whisper Me Your Secret

by eiluned



Series: Heart Hides a Secret [3]
Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Coulson ships it, Emotional Introspection, F/M, Love Confessions, Major Character Injury, Mission Fic, Pre-Avengers Movie, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-03
Updated: 2012-11-03
Packaged: 2017-11-17 17:01:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eiluned/pseuds/eiluned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All of her was focused on dragging Clint to cover, his hot blood on her hands, the labored sound of his breathing, and the sudden, shocking realization that she was in love with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whisper Me Your Secret

**Author's Note:**

> The third story in my Heart Hides a Secret series, following Lather Rinse Repeat and More Than This. You don’t have to have read those to read this one, but it’ll help. :) Please excuse any medical inaccuracies; I’m hand-waving a lot of it. S.H.I.E.L.D. has great technology. Yeah.
> 
> Thanks to chez_amanda and SidheRa for the beta reads, and I’m dedicating this one to them and EuphoricSound because they are all awesome & ES had to wade through a hurricane. <3 Feedback makes me a happy fangirl!
> 
> TW: Past thoughts of suicide are mentioned briefly in this story.

There was a sharp _crack_ , a sound she wasn’t supposed to hear, not then, because no one knew they were breaking into that compound. No one was _supposed_ to know.

There was a thud and a grunt of pain just behind her, and she turned to see Clint stagger, his face contorted with pain. He fell against her, his greater weight taking her down to the ground with him, and cold dread washed over every inch of her.

Someone had sold them out, but she couldn’t spare a thought for that right then. All of her was focused on dragging Clint to cover, his hot blood on her hands, the labored sound of his breathing, and the sudden, shocking realization that she was in love with him.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” she whispered, rolling him over. “Clint, stay awake for me.”

There was a bullet wound in his back. The bullet had pierced his body armor-- _someone sold us out_ \--and struck just below his right shoulder blade, and it felt like everything she was made of was spinning down a drain so she could be filled up again with icy fear.

Swallowing down the rising panic, she thumbed her comm. “Boss,” she said, pressing both hands over the wound.

“Go ahead,” Coulson answered.

“Agent down. We need immediate evac, south side of the compound. There’s a sniper,” she said, and even she could hear the tremor in her voice.

Coulson heard it, too, because she could hear him giving sharp orders to the backup agents. “We’re thirty seconds out,” he said, his own voice tense, and the comm went silent.

Clint shifted uncomfortably under the pressure from her hands, groaning softly. “You still with me?” she whispered.

“Ow,” he replied, and she fought the absurd urge to laugh.

And goddammit, this was not the time for emotion to rear its ugly head. There was a sniper and however many guards inside the compound, and Coulson and the rescue brigade would be there any second, which meant they’d end up in a firefight. This was _not_ the time for her to choke down a confession of love. She couldn’t afford to be distracted, and love was the ultimate distraction, a child’s game that swallowed you whole, warped your mind, got you killed.

There was a hail of cover fire, under which Coulson and a couple of medics made it to their position and slapped a compression bandage onto Clint’s wound before strapping him to a stretcher. Natasha laid down her own cover fire as they retreated, and then it was a blur of vans, helicopters, bustling surgeons, the cold comfort of a waiting room.

“Natasha.”

She looked up from her silent contemplation of her bloody hands to find Coulson standing in the doorway, holding a small duffel bag. “Why don’t you go clean up and change into some civvies?” he said, holding out the bag. “He’ll be in surgery for another hour or so.”

That was logical, she knew. It wasn’t helping anything to sit in that plastic chair, covered in blood, but it still took a monumental effort to make herself stand up, walk to Coulson, take the bag from his hand.

“He’ll pull through,” Coulson said gently, worry and sympathy muddied together in his expression. “He’s a tough guy. I’ve seen him shake off worse.”

She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer because if she spoke, she thought she might break down.

She had only broken down, _really_ broken down once before, just after S.H.I.E.L.D. had deprogrammed her, when she was learning to understand her own emotions for the first time since she was a child. Images of things she had done, people she had killed, ran through her mind like a grotesque film reel on an infinite loop. Clint found her curled up in the corner of her bare room-- _a cell, nothing sharp, nothing she could use to kill herself_ \--and he simply sat down at her side. He didn’t touch her, didn’t say anything, didn’t judge her, just sat with her.

His presence then was the most comforting thing she could remember.

The shower was hot, and she watched blood sluice off of her body and down the drain. She had done this more times than she could count, but it had never been blood that mattered washing away with the water. It had never been blood that belonged to someone she cared about. Someone she loved.

_Love is for children. Love is for children. Love is for children._

It had become a mantra for her, especially in the last six years, ever since she defected. Ever since Clint. Drakov’s words, spat at her when she was eight years old and he found her helping another girl, his own daughter, tend her wounds. Later, when his daughter failed a mission, he ordered Natasha to kill her, and in the Red Room, you don’t refuse orders.

Do not love, do not care, do not become caught up in the tangle of emotion and sentimentality. It was the one thing that S.H.I.E.L.D. had trouble breaking, the one thing left from her old life, the life she had discarded like torn clothing, and now that last layer of armor was finally cracking.

She scrubbed at her skin until it was red, trying to convince herself that what she felt wasn’t love. It was partnership. Concern for someone who had always showed her kindness.

When she stepped back into the waiting room, she had almost convinced herself.

Coulson was there, and he stood as soon as she entered. “He’s in recovery now,” he said, relief etched on every line of his face. “I bullied the nurses, so you can go see him. If you want.”

Coulson knew. She could read it in his posture, in how she hadn’t even had to ask if she could see Clint, in the tentative warmth in his eyes.

She started to take a deep breath, to explain, but he just motioned at the hall behind her. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you there.”

Halfway down the long hall in the bowels of HQ, she finally spoke. “Someone sold us out,” she said softly.

Coulson stiffened slightly at her side. “I know,” he finally answered. “It had to be one of ours. Give me a couple of days, Natasha. I’ll take care of this.”

She shot him a look, knew that he could read it because he shook his head gently at her. “This isn’t the time for revenge,” he told her. “I know it sounds... good. It sounds like a good idea, but in the end, Natasha, it’s not. It’s just... more red in your ledger.”

Pushing her hair back from her face, she let out a little huff of humorless laughter. “I don’t need any more of that,” she said. “I have more than enough.”

“I’ll take care of this,” he repeated. “Don’t worry. Whoever passed that information along is going to wish they’d never been born by the time I’m finished with them.”

The recovery room was small and dim, with a single bed in the middle and a nurse stationed outside. “Go in,” the nurse said, casting Coulson a disgruntled look. “He’ll stay here for a couple of hours before we move him to one of the regular observation rooms. The surgeon has him pretty heavily sedated, so he probably won’t really wake up for a day or so.”

Natasha couldn’t thank the nurse. She couldn’t even speak because Clint was there, a heart monitor beeping beside him and IV tubes running down from his arms, his chest rising and falling on a ventilator, and he was so pale and looked smaller than he should, and she could feel her throat tightening up.

The door clicked shut behind her, but she didn’t pay any attention. She was on autopilot: cross the room, sit in the chair, breathe in, breathe out, and all of her hard work at convincing herself about what she didn’t feel evaporated into the air.

She sat on the cold chair, folded in on herself, and broke down for the second time in her life.

*****

Natasha refused to go home. The nurses and doctors seemed torn between sympathy and exasperation, and Coulson was threatening to sic Director Fury on her, but she dug in her heels and lifted her chin and told them all to fuck off because she was not going to leave Clint’s bedside.

“He’s my partner,” she said stubbornly to a frustrated doctor. “I’m not going anywhere until I’m sure that he’s going to be okay.”

“Agent Romanoff, I’ve _told_ you--” the doctor began, but Natasha cut her off.

“I’m aware of what you’ve told me, and I’m not leaving. Now, I’ll stand over here out of the way while you do your thing.”

She moved to the corner, crossing her arms over her chest, and watched as the doctor carefully removed the ventilator and checked Clint over.

Nearly two full days’ vigil really hadn’t done much in the way of helping make herself believe that she wasn’t in love with him. It had done the opposite, actually; she had spent long hours just staring at him, watching his still face. She felt like a lovesick fool, a little girl, but she had realized that it would do no good to lie to herself.

To put it simply, she _was_ in love with him, and it scared her to death.

Furthermore, she had also realized that she had been in love with him for a good, long while. In those silent hours, she found herself thinking about absurd little things: the warmth of his hands when he touched her; the way he would gasp her name when they were in bed together; the tiny smile he would give her when they were around other people; the easy, crooked grin he saved for when they were alone.

Most of all, she thought about how he had stepped in front of that bullet. For her.

She wasn’t worth it. She knew she would die in the line of duty, but she knew she wasn’t worth a good man’s life. There was too much red in her ledger; she already owed Clint too much to pay back, and now she owed him her life in an even more tangible way. He had saved her.

She had been in the process of crouching when he took that bullet, and the more she thought about it, she realized that the shot had been meant for her head. Clint had somehow seen the shooter and stepped right in the way.

She didn’t know how to deal with that, with the idea that someone valued her enough to risk his own life in such a situation. They’d taken risks on missions before, protected each other’s backs, but nothing like this.

The doctor interrupted Natasha’s thoughts. “He looks good,” she said. “His breathing is strong and the incision is healing well. He’ll probably wake up fully in the next couple of hours. He was drifting in and out during the exam. Don’t let him get up when he does wake up, though.”

Natasha nodded more as a courtesy than anything else, and as soon as the doctor left the room, she pulled her chair right up next to the bed. Despite the doctor’s repeated insistence that he’d be fine, that S.H.I.E.L.D. used the best medical technology during surgery, she had been afraid to believe them. She didn’t want to believe and then have it all ripped away, but seeing him without the tube in his mouth was good. It made her believe, and relief washed over her. He was going to wake up soon, and he was going to be fine.

Nearly two days with little sleep suddenly caught up with her. Taking Clint’s hand in hers, she put her head down on the hospital bed by his hip and fell asleep with tears of relief on her face.

*****

“Tasha?”

She jolted awake, sitting straight up and trying to brush away the lock of hair that was stuck to her cheek.

Clint was bleary-eyed and still pale but he was awake, and she wondered if everyone who was in love cried all the damn time. Her eyes burned, but she blinked until it went away. “Hey, you’re awake,” she said, a relieved smile splitting her face. “How do you feel?”

“Eh,” he said, his voice raspy. “How long’ve I been out?”

“Two days,” she said, standing up and walking across the room so she could have a moment to get herself in order.

“Ugh. Doc got the bullet out?”

“Of course,” she said. “Clint... Why the hell did you do that?”

When she turned back after a second’s silence, she found him giving her a confused look. “Do what?”

She had to swallow before she could speak again. “You stepped in front of a bullet for me. Why?”

His brow furrowed. “Why what?” he said. “Tasha, I wasn’t going to let you get shot.”

“But that doesn’t mean you should’ve nearly gotten yourself killed,” she retorted hotly.

“Natasha,” he said, and she took a deep breath, trying to rein herself in. “Come here. Please?”

She sat back down in the chair, staring resolutely at the wall because she knew if she were to look at him, she would lose it.

But his fingers slipped under her chin, bringing her eyes to meet his, and what she saw there made her breath catch.

“Why shouldn’t I have stepped in front of that shot for you?” he asked softly.

“I’m not worth it,” she whispered, choked by the emotion that she couldn’t suppress.

His fingertips stroked across her cheek. “Yes, you are,” he whispered back.

He said it with such conviction, like he believed that more than he believed in anything else in the world, and she felt her armor-- _love is for children_ \--splinter like cracking ice.

*****

Three days later, the doctor released Clint on the condition that he was not allowed to do any physical activity other than walking from the bed to the bathroom to the couch. Natasha thought Coulson might have had a hand in it, since the doctor allowed her to be his caretaker.

“I’ve been told no one’s better at bossing him around than you, Agent Romanoff,” the doctor said with a faint smile, and Natasha grinned at the look on Clint’s face. “Agent Barton, you can sponge off, but no showers or baths until the incision is healed.”

“Aw, doc,” he complained, hanging onto the shoulders of the aide that was helping him into a pair of sweatpants. “I smell terrible.”

“Sponge off,” she repeated, “But do not get that incision wet or I’ll have your ass.”

“Shower,” Clint said as soon as they got in his door.

“Nope,” Natasha replied, helping him shuffle across the living room.

“Aw, come on, Tash,” he complained. “I smell like an old sock.”

“Then you can have a sponge bath.”

“You gonna give me one?” he said with a leer. “We could play Sexy Nurse...”

She steered him into the bathroom. “I will give you a sponge bath, but you’d better rein in those horses, Barton,” she said and was suddenly struck by how much of Clint’s particular brand of idiom she had internalized. “No physical activity, remember?”

“Getting shot sucks,” he grumbled.

“Then don’t do it again,” she said simply, because there was just too much there for her to deal with at that moment.

She was coming to terms with how she felt about him. It was slow, and sometimes she could almost believe that she was just overreacting to the situation, but then he went and teased her, and all the reasons she had fallen in love with him came roaring back into her mind. But _telling_ him was something she didn’t know how to do. There wasn’t much that scared her, but the idea of saying those words aloud did. They would leave her open, vulnerable.

But she was already compromised. Saying the words aloud, to him, wouldn’t make a bit of difference if they were out in the field. She had thought at first that it would be a distraction in the field, but she already looked out for him more than she did for anyone else she worked with.

She helped him get undressed and wash up where he couldn’t reach. It was deeply intimate; she was taking care of him, doing what he wasn’t able to do, and in much the same way that he had taken care of her those years ago, she was doing it because she cared about him. Because she loved him, she mentally corrected herself.

When he was dry, he stepped into a pair of pajama pants, but he grimaced when he looked at himself in the mirror. Natasha followed his gaze and smiled when she saw the unruly subject of his unhappiness. “Want me to wash your hair?” she asked, and he gave her a grateful smile in return.

It took some creativity but she managed to build a makeshift ramp out of rolled towels, and he leaned back against that to rest his head on the edge of the tub. He closed his eyes when she wet his hair and hummed a little as she massaged the shampoo in, and this felt so good, so natural that she wondered why she was even bothering to try to resist the idea of being in love with him. He was Clint; she cared about him, she watched his back, and he did the same for her. She trusted him more than she trusted anyone else.

She could trust him with her heart.

She shut off the water after she had rinsed his hair, and before helping him sit up, she leaned down and pressed a kiss against his lips. “Come on,” she said, smiling a little at his look of pleased surprise. “Let’s settle your ass on the couch.”

When she eased him back onto the cushions, he grinned up at her, catching her hands in his. “Thanks, Tasha,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she replied, sitting beside him. “Just try to avoid getting shot in the future, okay?”

“I’ll try my best,” he said, his smile softening. “But... I’m not going to apologize for taking that bullet, and I’d do it again--”

“I love you.”

The words had popped out of her mouth before she had even made the decision to say them, and her heart immediately leapt into her throat. She wasn’t ready; she didn’t know how he would react or what he would say, and how had her armor shattered so completely without her notice?

His eyes widened, his mouth falling open in surprise for a second before snapping shut. He then gave her a very, very serious look as he said, “I know.”

It took a second for his response to sink in, and then another second to realize that he was quoting a movie at her.

“Damn it, Clint--”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, wincing as he suppressed a laugh. “I had to have my Han Solo moment. I’ve been dreaming of that since I was a kid--”

“This hasn’t been easy for me, damn it,” she said, starting to stand up so she could go be humiliated and lick her wounds in private.

But he caught her hand, wincing as he tried to pull her back down, and she sighed. “Don’t,” she said. “You’ll pull out your staples--”

He interrupted her with a kiss, tugging her close so he could thread his fingers through her hair, and she couldn’t help melting against him. He was alive and she had nearly lost him, and she hated that it had taken that for her to pull off her blinders and realize how she felt.

“I love you, too,” he breathed against her lips, and her heart thumped against her ribs.

“Is this a bad idea?” she asked softly, biting her bottom lip, and she was suddenly pouring out all of her fears and anxieties, everything that had been building in her head for the last week, ever since he had fallen into her arms, his blood flowing too freely. It wasn’t like her to be so open, but then she had always been more open with him than she would have thought wise, and he had never taken advantage of that.

“I don’t think it’s a bad idea,” he said when she had talked herself out. “It’s either this or we keep bottling it up, and... I’m tired of that, y’know?”

She nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s just... scary. I’ve spent my whole life believing that this is dangerous, and... acknowledging it is like jumping off of a diving board when you can’t see the pool below you.”

“I know,” he sighed, his hand coming up absently to stroke her hair. “I’ve always fallen too easily, but it never lasts. I mean, it’s never lasted like it has with you.”

That made her chest feel tight and she closed her eyes, smiling when he leaned in to steal a kiss. He reached for her, trying to pull her into his lap, but she shook her head. “That’s physical activity,” she said.

“Damn it,” he complained. “How long until--”

“Doc said three weeks.”

“ _Damn_ it.”

“Was this bad timing?” she asked.

He smiled and shook his head. “Not at all.”

*****

Three weeks passed with much grumbling from Clint about the lack of physical activity--double entendre and non-double entendre activities--and Natasha was beginning to agree with his rather melodramatic statement that it was possible to die from sexual frustration. She found herself almost physically aching to press her body against his more and more often as his convalescence dragged on, and she thought that was rather melodramatic of herself.

She slept beside him but if pressed, she wouldn’t admit that she spent a long while each night just watching him as he slept. She didn’t want anyone to know about that, and she wondered if people in love were all overtaken by that kind of sentimentality.

She liked watching his chest rise and fall. She liked how his hands would twitch as he was falling asleep, as if he were grasping for his bow. She liked the soft sound of his breathing and the way his eyelashes would flicker against his cheek when he would begin to dream.

She just loved him, and she was coming to peace with that idea.

The door opened, and she looked up from where she was sitting on his couch, thumbing through the most recent intelligence out of Russia, to see Clint grinning at her. “Good news?” she said, putting the reports aside and trying to suppress her own silly reaction to seeing his smile.

“Doc says everything’s healing up,” he replied, closing and locking the door behind himself. “I swear, I think they have magicians in the med unit, or nanobots or something. Took forever to heal when I got shot back in the army.”

“And your instructions?” she asked, smirking when he sighed heavily.

“I was hoping you’d forget to ask that. ‘Resume moderate physical activity,’” he quoted. “No missions for another month, but I’m supposed to increase activity when I feel like I can handle it.”

He was smirking at her now, and she felt warmth rise to her cheeks. “Increase activity, hm?” she said.

“Yep. As a matter of fact, I kind of feel like I should start increasing my physical activity level right now.”

She ended up half-naked underneath him on the bed, carefully rolling him onto his back when he winced and groaned. “Not too fast, hotshot,” she murmured, straddling his thighs. “I don’t want you to injure yourself in your haste to get in my pants.”

Grinning, he wrestled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor while she tugged his boxers off and got rid of her own bra and panties. Then it was skin against skin with nothing between them, and it felt so good that Natasha was a little breathless.

Neither of them had said “I love you” in the last three weeks, and she didn’t know if that was odd or not. It still made her nervous to say it aloud, but he didn’t seem unhappy about the lack. He still teased her and gave her little smiles and kissed her lips more tenderly than she thought she deserved.

But now, she found herself breathing it against his mouth, the curve of his neck, against the palm of his hand when he stroked her cheek, against the soft skin of his stomach as she made her way down his body with agonizing slowness.

His breath caught in his throat when she took him in her mouth, his back arching a little and his hands fisting in the duvet. “Tasha,” he gasped, his head falling back onto the pillow. “Oh shit, Tasha, you’ve gotta stop.”

Letting him slip from between her lips, she grinned up at him, pressing a kiss against his hipbone. “Too much?” she asked, nuzzling the line of hair leading up to his navel.

“It’s been a while, and this is going to be over embarrassingly fast,” he answered, his cheeks flushing a little bit.

“Tell me what you want, Clint.”

Pushing himself up on his elbow, he reached for her, pulling her against him and kissing her deeply, tilting his head and stroking his tongue against hers until she was squirming, squeezing her thighs together. “I want to make you come,” he rumbled, licking at her bottom lip. “And then I want to make love to you.”

She sighed when he slipped his hand between her legs, his fingers parting her and slicking in her wetness. “Yes,” she breathed, canting her hips as he stroked her clit. “Oh yes.”

Her body was desperate for him, so much so that she found herself gasping at the edge far more quickly than she would have expected. He held her gaze and she couldn’t close her eyes, no matter how intense the pleasure became. He was watching her, drinking her in; she was wrapped up in him, and god, she loved him.

When she tipped over that edge, he slipped his fingers inside of her and she clenched down on him, moaning his name over and over. “Oh yes, come for me,” he whispered, working her body just right so that she kept coming and coming. “I love the way you come for me, Tasha. You’re so fucking beautiful.”

With a final shudder, she went limp against him, trying to catch her breath. He gently pulled his fingers from her and brought them up to his mouth, licking her taste away, and she couldn’t stop herself from pressing her mouth against his skin. “Oh god, I want you,” she murmured, dragging her teeth along the line of his jaw.

“I love you,” he breathed in reply, pulling her mouth to his.

She straddled him again, slowly sinking onto him, and they rocked together. It was far more slow and gentle than they had ever made love before, and through the haze of desire she realized that they had been making love, not just fucking or having sex. He had been in love with her, and even though she hadn’t even realized it, she had loved him for a long time. When their bodies came together, they were expressing that emotion, giving it physical form in the shape of their shared pleasure.

Groaning her name, he wrapped his arms around her and pressed their bodies together, pulsing inside of her as they held each other close.

He dozed off in her arms, still not used to exerting himself, and she watched him. His face was relaxed, his breathing easy, his heart beating steadily against her hand where it rested on his chest.

“I love you,” she whispered.

He smiled a little in his sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> End Notes: Based on two of [my headcanons](http://brbshittoavenge.tumblr.com/tagged/avengers-headcanon):  
> 27\. Natasha realized she was in love with Clint when he stepped in front of a bullet meant for her. She hates that it took nearly losing him for her to realize just what he means to her.  
> 28\. She told him that she loved him when he woke up in a hospital bed a couple of days after he was shot. He said, “I know.” He’d been waiting to use that line since he was a little kid. He was also very lucky that he was already injured; otherwise, Natasha would have smacked him.


End file.
